Uncommon Threads
by Eilidh17
Summary: Kidfic.  Story tag to Threads.  After being kidnapped and killed by Replicator Sam, Daniel descends into the SGC somewhat altered from when he left.
1. Chapter 1

**Uncommon Threads**

**Chapter 1 **

**~Threads~**

"I tell ya, I'm going nuts!"

I thought my little declaration would get a bite out of Carter, but nope. A slight shudder—as though I caught her off-guard—is the most she gives me, preferring, instead, to keep her gaze fixed on whatever it is that has her so damn glued to her laptop.

Now, see, this is a change from the Carter of not so long ago. There was a time when me strolling into her lab had her straining every muscle to come to attention. It was respect back then. Now? Nadda. Oh, don't get me wrong though, because her fronting up in my office is a different thing. She gets all tense—checking the proverbial coast is clear of 'our' leg-hugging tyke—before she'll even dare to utter a word. See, our tyke is one freshly descended and very smaller than normal archaeologist, who—for reasons we can only speculate over—has a deep seeded fear of Carter.

Last time any of us saw Daniel, he was picking off bugs with a P90 before being mysteriously zipped away. According to Carter, the Replicators beamed him up with their nifty beaming thingy. They did the same thing to her not too long ago, only back then it was a love-sick Fifth with an axe to grind and some deluded fantasy to fulfill.

Anyway, after the whole kidnapping Daniel incident, the Replicators started to make good on their plan for galactic domination and did a real number on the System Lords. If anyone expected me to get all teary-eyed over their loss, they'd be sadly mistaken. The Replicators, however, didn't stop at snacking on Hat'aks. Nope, they decided to advance on Dakara. The Tok'ra poked their heads into proceedings—okay, just Jacob—and then Ba'al showed up for the party dressed in his gooldy best and forcing his 'higher than thou' attitude down our throats. Anubis got himself lost somehow; and Carter and Jacob reprogrammed the weapon at Dakara, sending a lovely message to the Replicators, who went to pieces. Literally.

Would have been quite the heroic ending if not for Jacob and Selmac checking out on life towards the end. Not taking away anything from the old General's death, but I could feel the seams of Earth's already shaky friendship with the Tok'ra, fraying just that little bit more. All in all, it was a pretty crappy couple of days. Carter had lost her father and we'd lost Daniel.

Or so we'd thought.

Really, should have known something was up. Ya, see, during all of this there were a few freaky things that made me wonder if our formerly ethereal teammate hadn't dipped his toes in the Ascended pond again. I was gonna kick his butt six ways to hell if he had, but at the same time, those instances of freakishness saved our collective assets.

In that moment of quiet that inevitably comes into being after such a hectic week of playing hero, what was left of SG-1, that old coot Bra'tac, and yours truly, gathered around the hallowed oak table for a briefing.

"I still don't understand what happened," Carter says, looking more than a little perplexed. She hates it when there's a mystery to be solved and she doesn't have all the clues. "One minute Anubis is about to push the button that ends all life in the galaxy and the next minutes he's just… gone."

Hey, I don't have a problem with that!

"Indeed, it is a great mystery." Teal'c readily agrees with his best raised eyebrow. How does the man do that?

Bra'tac, who I never truly took for being a great believer in all this Ancient mumbo jumbo and gobbledegook, decided he'd found some faith. "One can only assume he was vanquished by some beings. If not, why would he forfeit the weapon and his army?"

Damn! I hate it when the old guy makes sense… which is most of the time. Carter obviously agrees with him, and for once, we find ourselves locking gazes in some kind of freaky understanding.

"You think?" she says to me, using my favorite catch-phrase.

"I do." Heck, what else was I supposed to say? To disagree would require me to give a reason why, and I don't do that whole subjective reasoning thing very well.

"It's the only thing that would explain the self destruct not going off."

Hmm… bad wiring? Replicators in the circuitry? Bats in the belfry?

"Of what do you speak?" Bra'tac asks.

"O'Neill believes that Daniel Jackson was somehow responsible."

I do? Sure, why not.

Before I can answer in my own defense, there is a flash of light from my office that triggers the base alarms.

"Sir?" Carter starts to stand, rubbing her eyes. "I think it came from your office."

Really? What gave it away? The blinding flash? "Stay here," I order in my best base commander voice. Naturally, no one listens to me. Teal'c is off down the stairs, probably looking for a weapon. Carter decides to cover my six, while Bra'tac covers hers. Old geezer!

I peer around the door jamb, expecting Thor to be sitting in my chair or a Replicator to be hanging from the light fittings, but instead—and much to my total dismay—I find a kid curled up on my desk, totally buck naked and shivering.

"Carter, get me a blanket." My ever 'thinking on her feet' 2IC decides to improvise and pulls down the SGC flag, offering it up to me. "You call this a blanket?"

"Close enough," she shrugs.

It was at that very moment that our mysterious child-visitor sprang from my desk and all but leaped into my arms, his mouth open in a silent scream, eyes locked firmly on Carter.

To be continued.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

**~The Smallest Thread~**

I gotta feel sorry for Doc Brightman. She has this perpetual 'deer in the headlights' look on her face every time something new and perplexing is thrown her way. Us turning up in her infirmary with a flag shrouded kid glued firmly to my chest was one of those occasions. Much like Teal'c, the good doctor tends to speak with her eyebrows, lifting one to indicate a question and two for something akin to 'what the fuck'. This time, though, her face is unreadable, which is just plain scary.

She motioned for me to put the kid on the nearest gurney, but my little limpet had other ideas. He's got me in a death grip so fierce that I can feel my circulation starting to seize up.

"Here, let me try," she offers, attempting to uncurl his fingers from my shirt. Kinda reminds me of that scene in Alien where they're trying to peel the face sucker off the guys head, and I have an acid spurting thought as she slowly released one finger and then the next.

Carter—all sense of timing and common sense gone down the drain—offers to help out, and even before she's taken one step forward, the kid stiffens in my arms and headbutts me in the face.

"Back up, Carter!" I order, sure he's split my nose in two. Hands raised in surrender, Carter gets the message loud and clear and slowly moves away. In the end, and much to my relief, Brightman orders everyone out of the infirmary except me and the kid, and sets about getting us settled on a bed.

"Can you tell me what happened, General?" she asks, pen poised and ready to make notes.

Let's see, what did happen? "Well, we lost our archaeologist and gained a kid." I guess that about sums it up.

"You're saying this is Doctor Jackson?"

Did I say that? "Did I say that?" Is there an echo in here?

"Well, that's what you inferred."

"Look, Doc. One minute we were in a briefing, next minute there's this bright light in my office, alarms going off everywhere, and I find junior here curled up on my desk."

"I heard the base alarms," she says with a nod of agreement. "And you have no idea who this is?"

Said limpet appears to have fallen asleep with his head under my chin, drooling happily away on my best BDU blues.

"Not a clue," I say with all confidence.

"So, not Doctor Jackson then?"

"Well, if it is, he's lost a little weight, not to mention some height."

As she's scrawling away on her notepad, she mumbles, "Not the strangest thing I've seen around here."

I pretend I didn't hear her. "What was that?"

She looks up at me. "Nothing, sir. I'll need to get a blood sample from him."

"Yeah, and you might want to check for bombs in the teeth… you know, that sort of thing. Wouldn't be the first time the goold have used a kid to get at us."

"You think the Goa'uld beamed him into your office?"

"No, I think this kid was descended into my office, but that shouldn't stop you from checking him out anyway."

"Descended?"

"Yeah, the whole naked thing is a bit of a giveaway. When Shamda and his goat boys found Daniel, they said his arrival was preceded by a bright flash of light, before he appeared on the ground, butt naked."

Slightly puzzled, she replied slowly, "I guess that makes sense."

Hallelujah! Someone gets the whole naked thing. Now perhaps she can explain it to the rest of us. "It does?"

"Well, it makes sense as to why you would think he was descended."

Do'h! So close! "How 'bout you stick him while I hold on tight for the ride. Unless you think zatting him might be a better option?" I am kidding, of course.

"General, zatting someone isn't a recognized or approved form of sedation."

Woman does not understand my brand of humor.

To be continued…


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

**~Pulling the Thread~**

Doc opted for a quick jab of her 'approved' sedation, before she ran the kid through every test known to mankind, and a few I'm sure she made up along the way. At that point I was starting to wonder if Fraiser had left a handbook of 'how to do' in her office before she died. Wouldn't surprise me really, woman was a true legend.

Limpet, as I've christened him, has been unfurled from his flag and draped in an over-sized pair of scrubs with the arms and legs rolled up.

"You can stand down the bomb squad, General." Brightman returns Limpet's chart to the slot at the end of the bed and moves to check on the monitors she's attached him to. "There was nothing abnormal in his preliminary blood work."

"No bombs hidden in teeth, odd mechanical heart doodads?"

"He's a perfectly normal human child of approximately five years of age."

"What about his DNA?"

"Well, it's safe to say he has some," she replies, deadpan.

Damn! She does understand my humor! I'm in the company of a professional comedian.

"Funny, doc."

She gives me a small smile, the first I've seen from her since she took over the CMO position from Fraiser.

"The DNA will take a while longer."

Really? Well, that's sworn me off all those Maury Povich 'Who's your daddy' programs for life. "Then when can we expect him to wake up?"

Brightman nods towards the bed. "He's awake now."

What? I turn my attention back to Limpet, who is staring up at me from under a whorl of bed head hair, one hand curled under his chin. I'm not sure why I didn't notice this the first time we locked eyes in my office—perhaps it was the whole naked kid on my desk, alarms blaring, blinding light drama—but he has the most brilliant blue eyes. That is, once I've pushed aside a few unruly blond bangs to find them.

I hook a plastic chair with my foot and drag it over, parking my weary butt alongside his bed. "Hey,' I offer in my best caring tone. "You got a name?"

Limpet blinks slowly and licks his lips, and I'm pretty sure he's going to answer me.

But he says nothing.

"Okay, well, I'm Jack," I say, pointing to my chest as if to emphasize my identity. "And this," I toss a thumb over my shoulder at Brightman, "is Doctor Brightman."

"I don't think he understands you, sir."

Really? What gave that away? "You wanna try?"

"He either can't understand you or can't hear you."

"Oh, he can hear alright. How do you explain his reaction to Carter? He definitely heard her before he saw her."

"You didn't mention that."

"I didn't think it was relevant or I would have."

Brightman stepped in closer and crouched down to his eye level, and for a moment I thought she was going to pull out the penlight of death and blind the poor kid with it.

"Hello," she whispers. Now, see, I tried that and it didn't work.

Limpet, living up to his new name, has his gaze firmly fixed on me and appears to ignore her completely. I'm starting to wonder if this is a woman thing he's got going here, although he hasn't done that whole stiff as a board and scared witless routine with Brightman.

She stands back up and moves away, telling me she has other patients and that if I have other duties to attend to, she'll have one of her nurses' sit with him. I check the time on the wall.

"Na, I'm good," I say, looking first at the kid and then back at her. "Shoulda bugged out of here a few hours ago."

After the doc has left, I turn back to Limpet to find him asleep again, hand still tucked under his chin and those errant bangs of his falling against his eye lashes. Whoever this kid is, he's going to be a real lady killer when he grows up.

Which, of course, leaves me wondering about the greater picture: If he is a descended Ancient, exactly which Ancient is he and what the heck is he doing here?

To be continued...


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

**~Immortal Threads~**

"This is a joke, right?" I had an inkling Brightman was a comedian at heart, despite her outwardly cool exterior, but this went beyond funny and all the way up to cosmic giddiness. "Oh, I get it." I waggle a finger in front of my face, a sure sign that I'm on to her attempt at humor. "You think because there's one of me running about the place that Daniel might like his own… Daniel." Why doesn't that sound right? "Right. Gotcha. Did Carter put you up to this, because it's just the kinda thing she'd do."

Funny. Brightman doesn't look amused. "General, if you'd like, I can have Doctor Warner read over these results again and confirm them for you?"

I am trying my best not to do that whole squinty-eyed, brow-furrowing thing. You know the one that makes it look like I'm so utterly confused that everyone thinks it's a put on and I actually know more than I pretend to? Oh, they don't know how wrong they are.

I swallow hard and tear my gaze away from Limpet. "You're trying to tell me that this… kid… is Daniel?" Huh! I've just discovered that I can talk and laugh maniacally at the same time. I think this is what is loosely called desperation.

"The DNA is a perfect match."

"Clone?"

"We're not seeing any sign of the genetic drift that is present in the DNA of a clone, so… no."

"Okay, so what happened to the rest of him? You can't just shrink a person."

Brightman looks slightly exasperation. "As this is my first downsizing case, I don't have any clear answers for you."

"What about the unclear ones?" Yep, definitely desperation.

"You, yourself, thought the child had descended, so I can only assume something in the process went wrong and resulted in de-aging Doctor Jackson. Or—"

"There's an or?"

"Or perhaps he was deliberately sent back this way."

She had a point, albeit a very small one. "You know, this isn't Daniel's first trip down Ascension Avenue. He's been there and got the t-shirt to prove it."

"I know that. You're point?"

I step away from the bed and motion for Brightman to follow. No way do I want the kid listening in on this conversation. "My point is that the first time he ascended, he had to die first. Now, with that in mind, it would stand to reason that the Replicators had him killed or where at least responsible for his death."

"Meaning?"

It was clear Brightman didn't understand. "I need to speak to Colonel Carter. Call me when he wakes up. No, wait… I'll have Teal'c come and sit with him."

"We're more than capable of looking after him, General."

"If this is Daniel, then no, I'm not sure that you are."

To be continued…


End file.
